Man tried in France for beheading childless wife

She had refused to have sex with him during their marriage because she was afraid any child would be born with multiple sclerosis.

SAINT-OMER, March 8, 2010 (AFP) - A man went on trial in France on Monday for cutting his wife's head off with a kitchen knife because she refused to have a child with him.

Investigators said that Philippe Cousin, a 53-year-old manager in the postal service, called the police near Calais in northwestern France on April 16, 2007 and confessed to killing Nicole, 47, his wife of 21 years.

He told police she had refused to have sex with him during their marriage because she was afraid any child would be born with multiple sclerosis, a chronic disease from which her father suffered.

Cousin faces life in prison if convicted.

His lawyer Didier Robiquet said Cousin was stricken by "horror at his deed," which was driven by mid-life angst and frustration at not being a father, and had since been undergoing psychological treatment in prison.